


into a better shape

by Luxio_Nyx



Series: into a better shape [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Mostly Fluff, Parent Tony Stark, Post-Iron Man 1, Slight Hurt/Comfort, Timeline What Timeline, Tony Adopts Children, Tony Stark Has A Heart, We Make Our Own Timelines Here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 15:04:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17368142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luxio_Nyx/pseuds/Luxio_Nyx
Summary: It takes him ten minutes to process the two pairs of streaming brown eyes staring back at him. One boy, one girl. Two heads of curly brown hair tangled with dust and debris, every inch of exposed skin covered in cuts and bruises."How old are they, J?""Approximately 22 months, sir.""They both are?""I believe these are called 'twins', sir."Or, Tony finds two children in the aftermath of an attack and makes a decision. Part one in the "Everything and Nothing" series





	into a better shape

              He blames J.A.R.V.I.S. for his discovery, in the end.

              Pepper does not buy that excuse for a millisecond, but he tries and it is, technically, true.

              “Sir.”

              Tony hums in reply. He is still shaking with the memory of what he had flown into less than five minutes ago: the ruined homes, tents and stables in ashen, smoking ruins, the bodies scattered across fields and mountains like confetti. He had actually seen two militants tossing scraps at each other moments before he landed.

              Tony made sure to throw _those_ particular assholes into the nearest mountain with more force than was strictly necessary. Not _fatal_ force – he had checked with J.A.R.V.I.S., he always checked with J.A.R.V.I.S. – but enough to make his disapproval known before he blew their weapons caches to the next dimension.

              “Sir.”

              “What’ve you got, J?”

              “I am detecting vital signs ten clicks to the west, sir.”

              “Where?” Tony is already banking to the left, the HUD scanning his surroundings for whatever it is that J.A.R.V.I.S. had detected. He finds what he’s looking for before the A.I. can reply: two distinct heartbeats, faster than normal but nothing to indicate that either individual is in danger of dying any time soon, and corresponding heat signatures roughly the size of – “J, please tell me the size estimates are off on this.”

              “I’m afraid not. Sir.”

              He staggers into his landing next to a pile of rubble, the most off-balance he has been since his fight with Ob- with _Stane_ , and hardly bothers to look at the shell fragments scattered around the blast site.

              He knows whose weapons were used. He knows what he has done.

              “What do I lift, J?” he mutters.

              The HUD helpfully highlights the key pieces of rubble that need to be moved. The work is slower than anything that Tony has done on this side of the Atlantic, his every movement hampered by the trembling in his arms and the horrible feeling that he’s about to make everything worse.

              It takes twenty minutes for him to move the largest fragments out of the way. Fifteen to excavate the cramped, dusty cave formed by the back wall and what might have been a bedframe.

              Ten to process the two pairs of streaming brown eyes staring back at him. One boy, one girl. Two heads of curly brown hair tangled with dust and debris, every inch of exposed skin covered in cuts and bruises.

              “How old are they, J?”

              “Approximately 22 months, sir.”

              “They both are?”

              “I believe these are called ‘twins’, sir.”

              Tony snorts, then flinches when the sound causes both children to cower back from him – from the suit. He lifts the helmet off without another word and carefully crouches down until he is as close as he’s going to get to eye-level.

              “ _Salam_ ,” he offers carefully.

              The eyes blink back at him, once. Tony decides to take that as encouragement.

              “ _Zama num Tony de_ ,” he continues carefully. His accent is horrible, he knows that, though considering he learned what little he _can_ say in a cave, he thinks he’s earned some leniency.

              Neither child makes a sound. After a moment of staring steadily at him with soft, round faces that terrify him more than Pepper does on a bad day, the girl tilts her head to the side and stretches her arms up towards him. Less than a second later, the boy does the same. Tony lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding and carefully pulls both into his arms.

              “Injuries, J.”

              “Minor, sir. All of them external. No signs of head trauma or internal injuries.”

              “Are there… Who else is here?”

              “I cannot detect any additional signs of life, sir. Three deceased individuals are to your right. Two others are closer. All five died of their injuries approximately half an hour ago.”

              “Okay.” All right. So. He has two orphans now. He can’t fly with them. He can’t leave them. He’s also getting the earliest hints of an idea the longer he stares down at the toddlers in his arms, and that is a very, _very_ dangerous prospect. “J, get Rhodey on the line. And send Pepper a text – I’m going to need a lawyer. And the jet.”

*                         *                         *

              Rhodey yells at him for two straight hours once J.A.R.V.I.S. gets him on the phone, his rant about personal responsibility, consequences, and the pitfalls of childcare interrupted only by the arrival of the reinforced jet that Tony had left in New Dehli for safe-keeping.

              Pepper, waiting patiently on the tarmac in Malibu when they land at half-past four in the morning, has two car seats at the ready and a record three-and-a-half hour lecture that left Tony’s ears ringing for the rest of the day. She also has the Afghan consul waiting on the phone before Tony can close the front door behind him and a troop of lawyers parading through his living room the next day after she finally establishes that no, this was not a spur of the moment decision made in a drunken stupor and yes, he has thought this through as much as he ever thought anything through.

              They never find any other relatives, never learn what the twins’ names had been before everything happened. Sometimes the thought of what the twins have lost keeps Tony awake at night, doubt and guilt chasing each other around his brain until he can barely breathe.

              Happy is the first person, after Tony, to hold the twins. The boy cries the instant he feels Happy’s arms around him. The girl simply looks at the chauffeur and graciously accepts his offer of a finger to hold. Happy promptly bursts into tears, buries his face in his free arm, and tells Tony that he has allergies, dammit. Tony has J.A.R.V.I.S. record the entire encounter.

              He waits until his entire family can be there with him before he even suggests the topic of names, has Pepper clear both his and her schedules for the day and waits for Happy to drive a sleep-deprived Rhodey home from the airport once he gets permission to take leave. He even has Dum-E, U, and Butterfingers brought up from the lab for the occasion, much to Happy’s chagrin.

              “You’re not naming him after me,” Rhodey grumbles when Tony first suggests “James”, his arms curled protectively around the boy in question.

              Tony almost suggests “Yinsen”, almost adds “Howard” to the list in a fit of masochism before he shoves both options into a far, dark corner of his mind.

              He chooses Jaime instead.

              Pepper suggests Maria once, watches the blood drain from Tony’s face, and never brings it up again.

              Happy mentions offhandedly that his mother’s name was Sarah, then stares openmouthed when Tony immediately agrees to the suggestion.

              The twins blink after each of their names, calmly accept the hugs, kisses, and snuggles offered to them by their new aunt and uncles, and stagger away to play with the bots once they run out of patience.

              “I love you,” he tells them later, when everyone else is gone and both twins are haphazardly tucked into the cradles that Pepper chose for him.

              “I love you,” he says the next morning, because he grew up with Howard Stark, with distance and disapproval and so many things unsaid, and he did not pull these kids out of one ruined home just to push them into another one.

              Life goes on.

              He signs every piece of paperwork that Pepper gives him and buys her a miniature mountain of shoes at the end of the year for helping to keep word of the twins’ adoption away from the media. She stops by every day to check the contents of his fridge and twirl Sarah and Jaime around until they both giggle, her blouse damp with drool and tears and, on one horrible day, vomit, and her eyes bright.

              Rhodey caves into Tony’s nagging and sends him the number of a former USAF translator willing to teach Pashto to overwhelmed billionaires in his free time. Tony’s accent never improves, but he learns how to speak to his children without the memory of terrorist threats ringing in his ears. Rhodey is also responsible for most of the stuffed animals that Tony trips over every day on his way to the coffee machine, and Tony has the sneaking suspicion that there are Lego sets in his future. His feet are already crying at the thought.

              Happy practically invents a new car seat in his efforts to make Tony’s cars as family-friendly as possible. Either he learns how to knit, or he’s been hiding the hobby for the past decade, and Tony opens the twins’ closets one day to discover that he has more homemade blankets, sweaters, scarves and hats than he actually knows what to do with. He takes pictures of Sarah and Jaime in each of Happy’s creations and tells J.A.R.V.I.S. to save each photo forever.

              Tony watches Sarah pat Dum-E’s claw, hovers when U and Butterfingers carefully lift a giggling Jaime into the air before spiriting him away on their daily tour of the lab, and implements as many security procedures as he can think of until J.A.R.V.I.S. finally puts his metaphorical foot down.

              The first word Jaime says in front of Tony is “Papa”.

              Sarah’s first word, less than a minute later, is “Dum”. Dum-E brings her a smoothie five minutes later and ignores Tony for a week after he takes it away.

              “I love you,” Tony tells them every morning, and every night, and sometimes he says it at lunch because he can.

              It takes him a month before he realizes that he means it. That he has always meant it.

              It takes two before the twins say it back, first Sarah and then Jaime, identical pairs of soft brown eyes staring up at him beneath layers of knitted blankets, their chubby arms wrapped around two teddy bears in identical flight suits.

              Tony smiles and thinks, for the first time since he left that godforsaken cave in Afghanistan, that he has finally done something to be proud of.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! So, in case you couldn't tell, this takes place shortly after the events of the first Iron Man film. It is also the first in a series of one-shots and longer stories that I have planned in which I destroy the MCU timeline while laughing maniacally.
> 
> A couple of notes here: 
> 
> 1\. I do not speak Pashto. Google is my friend here, and if you see something wrong in this or other stories in this series, let me know!
> 
> 2\. I have ignored so many laws and legal processes in the course of this story. However, this is also the Marvel universe where a billionaire can privatize world peace and violate the sovereignties of multiple nations with little to no political consequences, so I feel like we can overlook some things.
> 
> 3\. Um.... review? Kudos are nice, but reviews make me smile and write faster.


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